


Now

by Laura JV (jacquez)



Series: Echoes [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Kink, Mirror Universe, forced mindmeld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-06-14
Updated: 1999-06-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquez/pseuds/Laura%20JV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy reacts to the forced mind-meld in "Mirror, Mirror".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now

Spock stood in the doorway of my office, as he had nearly every day for the past two years. I could feel him there, waiting. I swallowed and looked up. "What's on the agenda for today, Spock?"

"You."

Oh, no, not this. With a sickening lurch in my stomach, I remembered his body pressed against mine, his mind forcing its way through my barriers. No, not him--his double. Remembered dreams of *my* Spock doing the same thing, dreams that had disturbed my sleep for months and from which I had woken with my belly slick with semen blended in my mind with the actual forced meld. "What about me, Spock?" I kept my voice casual. 

"Tell me what I have done, Leonard."

"You? Nothing."

"Leonard. Now."

The word affected me as it had before, so long ago. It echoed inside my veins, and I suppressed the urge to kneel before him, to lean my head on his thighs and beg him to heal the damaged places inside my head. Instead, I gestured for him to come in. He did, and the door slid shut behind him.

"What makes you think--"

"Len." His voice was soft, so soft. "Now."

The focus I had craved so long in that voice had returned. His entire attention--that formidable mind, those long-fingered hands, those black eyes--all belonged to me at this moment. And I could no longer resist his command, tempered as it was by genuine concern.

He took one step closer to me, and I felt the heat of his body. "Now."

His eyes met mine with the easy openness of a friend.

"Your counterpart--" I swallowed and looked at the floor, unable to tell him.

I didn't need to.

"You should have told me," he said, and I found myself clinging to him, shuddering convulsively, his inhumanly warm hands keeping me from falling. There was no hint of mind-touch where his skin brushed mine, nothing but the slide of his fingers through my hair and his pulse beating quickly against my cheek where I'd pressed my face into his neck.

When the tremors subsided, he kept hold of me, and I was glad to let him. "How deep did he go?"

"Not very. Just wanted to know who I was, and what was going on. But it hurt."

"Yes. It would." He shifted, pulling back so he could see my face. "Do you require assistance dealing with it? Were you Vulcan, what he did would be considered rape. But I confess I do not know how humans cope with such things." 

"Doesn't often happen." I leaned back into him, and he let me. "I'll be fine. He didn't--didn't touch anything personal. My name, the name of my ship, the current situation."

"Good."

"Good? Is that all you have to say, you--"

He dropped his arms and stepped back, his face blank. "I am gratified that you were not badly injured, Doctor. Good evening." He spun and walked out, his body language as cold to me as it had been when I first met him.

I sank into my desk chair and buried my head in my hands.

Two hours later, I pressed the buzzer on his door and heard that calm, dark voice answer the signal with one word: "Come." I walked in, and he rose out of the shadows like a spirit, robed in black, a long knife in his hand.

"Am I...interrupting?"

"I was about to perform the Meditation of Blood." He set the knife down on his desk and steepled his fingers. "May I help you?"

The Vulcans have a ritual called the Meditation of Blood? I couldn't imagine it--they were all cool reserve and asceticism. But then I remembered the mirror-Spock, and the casual ease with which he fit into the bloody Empire, and the silent Vulcan guards at his side. And the Romulans--

As though someone had hit me over the head with it, I realized, suddenly, that Vulcan emotionlessness was cultural, not biological, and that Spock had been teasing me for two years with his "I have no emotions" routine.

_Dammit, Spock_ , I almost said, but instead I said what I had come there to say. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have treated you like that."

His black eyes met mine, and I saw the hurt in them. "No, you should not have." He picked up the knife and went to hang it on the wall, under his longsword.

"Spock--"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Thank you for helping."

His features softened. "Leonard, come here."

I did, obeying the natural command in his voice, feeling it curl through me, as thin as smoke and as pervasive.

"When a Vulcan is forced as you were, they cannot bear the mind touch for a long time, even from their mate. But they need physical touch to keep them sane and to help them heal. You have no mate, Leonard. Let me help."

And he held me close again, warming me through, brushing back my hair. I choked back a sob when I thought of the other Spock holding me like this against a wall, the heat of his fingers pressing into my arm.

But this was *my* Spock, the one I sometimes dreamed about.

"It helps," I murmured against the skin of his neck, wrapping my arms around his waist.

"You are safe, now," he said.

"Now?" I asked.

"Yes, Len. Now."

\----------

**Author's Note:**

> I could write a million stories about the forced meld in "Mirror, Mirror". I admit I'm a little curious about which one I would write now, but this is the one I wrote in 1999. I have some complicated feelings about how well I conveyed the rather thorny nest of emotions and events here; I think this one could've benefited from a beta reader, but I wasn't using a beta at the time.
> 
> I believe this story contains the first mention of the Meditation of Blood, a Vulcan ritual I invented that I am rather fond of, and the story overall may have been influenced by what I now call "Spock's Manpain Meditation", which is in Margaret Wander Bonanno's novel "Dwellers In the Crucible". 
> 
> This story has been slightly edited from its original version, mostly to correct typographical errors.


End file.
